


Revolutions & Disillusion

by shootingstarcipher



Category: IT (2017)
Genre: Angst, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Monster!AU, Romance
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-09-26
Updated: 2017-10-07
Packaged: 2019-01-05 19:12:13
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 9,378
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12195942
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shootingstarcipher/pseuds/shootingstarcipher
Summary: He’d watched his world get torn apart at the age of five and since then become entirely reliant on the pills his mother forced down his throat through her obstinate insistence and cruel manipulation, but Eddie’s torment was far from over. It occurred to him seven years later, at the age of twelve, that perhaps those pills had been doing him some good after all – that maybe they weren’t keeping diseases away, but keeping his in.





	1. Little Games

No-one was more worried than Eddie – not even Richie, who had been the one to suffer the brunt of the attack. Stan had gotten away lightly, managing to slip away to get help with only a scratch and a patch on his stomach that would surely result in a bruise. The fight had been broken up pretty quickly after that and they had Stan to thank for it, because no-one else had been around and Richie wouldn’t have given up until he was knocking at death’s door if Henry Bowers and his gang hadn’t been chased away sooner. Unlike Stan, Richie had been more seriously injured, with blood leaking from his potentially broken nose and several gashes to his arms and legs, one of which was deep enough to suggest stitches may be necessary.

Neither Bill nor Eddie had been around to witness the fight (which had undoubtedly been initiated by Bowers and wouldn’t have escalated into a full-blown fight if Richie had kept his mouth shut and ignored his compulsion to retaliate, but he hadn’t succeeded in doing that yet and anyone who knew him would have said he never would) and while they were both affected by this revelation, the guilt of his closest friend’s injuries clung to Eddie Kaspbrak the most.

He felt it was his responsibility. Richie had always been more protective of him than the others, and including him Eddie had three people (excluding his extremely overbearing mother) who were always there for him and who would often baby him, leading him to feel more helpless than he perhaps truly was. But now Richie was the one in need of protecting – or at least had been just a few minutes earlier – and Eddie had failed to return the countless hours of defence the older boy had offered to him. And that meant he had failed Richie.

Helping him over to one of the benches outside of the school, Eddie (or Dr K, as he was frequently referred to in these sorts of situations due to his extensive knowledge of first aid and all things health-related) crouched down in front of his more seriously injured friend and began expertly treating his wounds, frowning every time his friend twitched or hissed at the pain. His movements made it harder to treat his injuries and the noises he kept making were annoying him, distracting him from the situation at hand. 

Once Richie’s open wounds had been treated, Eddie stood up and – with more confidence, aggression and concern than they had ever heard seeping from his voice – ordered his other two friends to ensure Richie was taken to a hospital immediately, to check that his nose wasn’t in fact broken. Stan was about to ask why he wasn’t going with them but was cut off with a glare, though Eddie’s gaze softened when he said goodbye to Richie. Nobody dared argue with him and instead silently watched him walk back into school, his body controlled by pure fury and determination.

He found Patrick Hockstetter inside the school building, leaning nonchalantly against the wall of the first corridor he entered and – his every action fuelled by nothing but hatred and ferocity – slammed his fist straight into Patrick’s face without even thinking. He wasn’t failing Richie again, and that meant he was going to have to do what he should done earlier; if it was too late to defend him, the least he could do was take revenge on those who had hurt him.

Patrick was only stunned at first, giving him the opportunity he needed to get in another hit before the older boy started fighting back. That shock quickly turned to anger but Eddie’s fury remained ignited, hiding his fear. His bared teeth giving him the appearance of a deranged wild animal, Eddie lunged forwards without giving Patrick the chance to defend himself. Good, he told himself as he crashed into the older boy’s chest, sinking his teeth into his shoulder as hard as he could. They hadn’t let Richie defend himself. Or Stan, for that matter. Blood flooded his mouth and his fury was momentarily replaced almost entirely with disgust. Coughing and spluttering, he fell back onto the floor – with Patrick’s help, who was shoving him away roughly – and spat out every last drop of the crimson liquid, feeling as if he were about to throw up the entire time.

His inhaler spilled out of his pocket as he it hit the floor and, though he scrambled to pick it up as soon as he was done spluttering, Patrick got there first, holding it above his head, taunting him cruelly, before throwing it down the hallway, suggesting that if it was really that important to him, he’d run after it. “You bastard,” Eddie snarled, dusting himself off as he turned to snatch up his inhaler. He was sick to death of Patrick and Henry’s games, always exploiting the losers’ weaknesses simply to be vindictive.

But a hand reached out and grabbed at his clothes, dragging him backwards while a voice growled in his ear, “I don’t like the way you just spoke to my friend.” Eddie gave a helpless whimper and was instantly shoved to the floor again, twisting round to find Henry Bowers towering above him, the rest of his gang standing behind him with callous, menacing smirks on their faces. It dawned on him then that even Bowers’ gang had each other’s backs more than he apparently had Richie’s. That single thought relit the rage within him, fortitude taking control of him once again.

This time, however, with an entire gang going up against sweet, delicate little Eddie, rage and fortitude could only get him so far. He pushed himself up, preparing to kick out Bowers and then pounce on him when he was least expecting it, but Henry immediately raised a foot and stomped hard on his chest, squeezing the air right out of his lungs. He expected to die. His inhaler was right there, just a couple of yards away, but no amount of wishing or praying or reaching was going to get him it.

In fact, he probably only survived the ordeal because a teacher glared at them as he strode past, prompting Bowers to grab him by the shirt again and lift him up. He had just enough time to claw at his inhaler, luckily successfully retrieving it, before his fanny pack was snatch off him, emptied out onto the floor, and he was stuffed into a nearby cupboard, his only companions being the caretaker’s cleaning equipment. Darkness enveloped him as the door slammed shut. He banged his fists against it, screaming to be let out, but all he heard in reply was a sarcastic jeer. “Oh, I’ll let you out, alright – once summer’s over!” Bowers’ ended with a malicious cackle.

Then Eddie heard the door click and from then on, the handle would barely move. That was the last sound he heard until the next morning.

He was horrified, knowing he was all alone, knowing that an inch of metal stood in the between him and the pills he relied so heavily on. Whatever it was that they did for him, he was utterly convinced that his life could only get worse with every moment that went by as long as he wasn’t taking them. He was fragile, easily damaged and everybody knew that – that was why he was such an easy target and without his medication, it felt like everything was lethal.

His fists hurt from banging on the door so much and so, screaming in frustration until his voice grew hoarse, he curled up on the floor with his back against the door and held his inhaler to his mouth, desperately breathing into it. He felt calmer within minutes but the situation was dire no matter how he looked at it. He was trapped in a dingy cupboard, his much-needed pills on the other side of a metal door, and as far as he could tell, he was going to be trapped in there for the entire summer.

Even though it was summer, the night he spent in the cupboard was cold and threatening, the ghostly shadows on the walls surrounding him becoming ominously towering figures in flickering light. He almost draped a dirtied cloth over himself for warmth but quickly decided it wasn’t worth it – without his pills, he felt more threatened by germs than ever and besides, the cloth was thin and ragged and wouldn’t have provided much warmth anyway. So he spent the night shivering, crying and breathing into his inhaler, sometimes alternating between the three of them and sometimes experiencing all of them simultaneously.

The alarm on his watch beeped at him numerous times during the night, each time a reminder of the danger he was in.

It was impossible to tell when the night ended and dawn began at some point during his time locked inside the cupboard he woke up with a jolt, sounds of banging and shouting alerting him to the fact that he wasn’t entirely alone. Initially, panic set in, adrenaline rapidly throwing through his veins as he panted into his inhaler, petrified of what the sounds could mean. What if Henry Bowers and his gang had come back to finish him off? He wouldn’t have put it past them. They were getting closer, their footsteps growing louder. 

Leaping to his feet defensively, he grabbed the nearest thing to him (which happened to be a long-handled mop) and stood by the door, ready to strike.

But then a new development occurred when he began to hear their shouts more clearly. They were shouting his name, except… except it sounded as though there was only two of them, and one of them was shouting an irritating nickname that he was relieved to hear. Eds. 

“Richie?” he yelled back, knocking frantically on the door and dropping the mop in the process. “I’m in here! Henry” – he breathed into his inhaler – “and his gang locked me in here!”

The door opened and he fell forwards, luckily knocking into Richie who caught him immediately and helped to steady him. Behind Richie was Bill Denborough, his eyes overflowing with concern as he watched Eddie break down in front of him.

“I was so scared,” Eddie spluttered, leaning against Richie and resting his head on his shoulder, his voice muffled by the older boy’s clothes. “They took my pills. Where are they?” Lifting his head up and pushing Richie away in a panic, he scanned the corridor in a frenzy, searching frantically for any sign of his tablets or the fanny pack he kept them in. Nothing. Richie and Bill both held onto him in attempt to calm him down but to no avail, and even his inhaler didn’t seem to be helping. “I have to get home. My mom is gonna freak when she finds out-”

Speaking of whom, hadn’t she been searching for him? Wasn’t she worried about where he was? Didn’t she care?

“We’ll get you home, Eddie. D- Don’t worry.” His thoughts were interrupted by Bill’s voice and soothed by the feeling of Richie’s hand pressing against his back, rubbing in circular motions while he intertwined their fingers with his other hand.

They walked him home in silence, Richie on his left and Bill on his right. He wondered how they’d found him, how they’d broken into the school and how they’d even realised he was missing (seeing as his mother hadn’t seemed to notice his absence) but the only question he actually asked – and only when they’d finally reached his house – was whether or not Richie had been to the hospital and, when they replied that he had, what had gone on there. Apparently, his nose wasn’t broken, but he was lucky that it wasn’t, and one of his knife wounds had required a few stitches but he was feeling much better now – now that Eddie was with him.

They walked up to the door hand in hand. The door was unlocked and Eddie stepped inside, inviting his friends to come in with him. As they strode inside – though Eddie was really staggering rather than striding – Eddie called out for his mother, half-expecting her to rush into the hallway the moment he stepped into the house. She didn’t, and that’s when he really started to worry.

Inhaler at the ready, he rushed through the house, anxiously looking for any signs of his mother’s presence. Bill was about to suggest that she’d gone out looking for him or to the police for help, but then he heard a sharp, horrified shriek from the kitchen and closed his mouth, he and Richie darting in the direction of the sound instead.

Mrs Kaspbrak was at home. But she was lying on the kitchen floor, unconscious, her hair matted with blood.


	2. Crazy

Eddie had thought his life to be a mess up until now. Now he knew what a real mess truly was, with both of his parents dead – one long ago and one he had only just found to be dead, lying in a puddle of ugly, sticky blood on the kitchen floor – and he had no other family to turn to, with the exception of an eerie uncle he who lived out of town and who he knew hardly anything about, except that he’d much rather stay here with the rest of the losers.

He glanced back at his two friends over his shoulder. Bill was staring at the pool of blood on the floor, stepping backwards to avoid touching it, and looking like he was about to be sick; it must have reminded him of the night Georgie went missing. Eddie didn’t blame him. He felt the exact same way. But unlike Bill, Richie’s gaze was fixated not on the corpse but on the corpse’s son – her living, breathing son – with an expression not of disgust, but of pure and total concern. He took a step forwards, not caring when he trod through the blood, and wrapped his arms around Eddie’s waist without a single word.

Eddie didn’t know how to feel. He was hurt that his mother hadn’t seemed to acknowledge his disappearance, devastated that he would never speak to her again, and yet relieved that he would never again be trapped inside his house with her against his will, and angry at himself for thinking like that.

After eventually convincing himself to be brave and do something about his mother’s demise and the mess it had left – and after convincing Richie to let go of him – he untangled himself from his friend’s grasp and took a hesitant step towards her body, crouching down to touch her matted hair. “Could you guys go and get me some bandages and stuff? It should be in the cupboard where all my medication is.” He didn’t turn around. Part of him just wanted to be alone while he knew, at the back of his mind, that isolation was the last thing he needed.

“You can’t help her, Eds. She’s gone… you know that.” He knew it, of course he did, but he still didn’t want Richie telling him that outright. Gritting his teeth in frustration, he balled up his fists but stayed quiet while trying to calm himself down, taking deep breaths and fumbling for his inhaler. He heard footsteps trailing away behind him, his two companions making their way to the other side of the kitchen to retrieve what he’d asked for in spite of the fact that neither of them truly believed he could do anything at all to protect his mother from death. It was clear to the two of them, after all, that she was never coming back, death’s cold clutches already having taken her to the grave.

A moment later and his dark reverie was broken by the sound of shouts coming from across the room, his friends calling his name, suggesting that he needed to see something important. He wondered what could have possibly been more important than taking care of his mother’s cold, lifeless body as she lay there dead in the family home but he looked up anyway, curious as to what they were talking about. His gaze immediately gravitated towards the open cupboard they were standing beside, where shelves and shelves of medication should have been stood, staring back at him. But they weren’t. Nothing was. The shelves were empty of the bottles of pills he so desperately relied on as well as the other medical supplies that should have been there.

That’s when Bill said what they were all thinking. “Who do y- you think… did this?”

Eddie shrugged but answered with another question. “And what if they’re still here?” Richie was by his side in a split second, tugging at his arm frantically as he told them both they needed to get out of there. Eddie’s words remained in the minds of all of them but Richie was the most affected, appearing more panicked about his friend’s safety more than his own – after all, it was Eddie’s home whoever it was had broken into; it was Eddie’s mother who lay dead on the floor in front of them. Eddie himself was shaking in fear but stood his ground, shaking his head and refusing to leave until he had at least cleaned up the blood and given his mother a better resting place.

But when the time came to move her – once he had successfully cleaned the kitchen to the best of his ability – he found that even with the help of his two friends, he didn’t have the strength to do it. So he said his final goodbye to her there on the kitchen floor, kissed her on the cheek one last time and allowed Richie to take him by the hand, pulling him out the door.

Bill followed after them, carrying with him a bag which he and Richie had packed full of Eddie’s clothes and belongings while he was in the kitchen with his mother’s body, and then handed the bag to Richie, explaining that he needed to get home. He knew Eddie would be in safe hands now that he had Richie to take care of him, and though he didn’t especially want to leave the two of them, he knew he had to – and besides, he was desperate to get back home and make sure his own family (or what was left of it) were alive and well. 

“You’re staying with me, Eds,” Richie told him as they walked hand in hand away from the house that seemed like, more often than not, a prison cell. The way he spoke made him sound less like he was offering his home to him and more like he was commanding him to stay, protectively slinging an arm around his shoulder and crushing him to his side as they walked. 

Eddie was starting to relax by now, finding the feeling of Richie’s arm around him more comforting than he ever would have had it been his mother and not his friend. But when they reached the pharmacy – his second home, perhaps – he couldn’t help but feel a sudden overwhelming urge to break out into tears. Richie pulled him closer, still oblivious to his despair, but then stopped right outside the pharmacy door. “Shouldn’t we go in? Just to see if they… I mean, you do need your pills, don’t you?” 

Eddie nodded solemnly in reply, glancing anxiously at the door. He didn’t really want to go in there, the mere atmosphere of the place reminding him of his mother, but he was simultaneously terrified of what would happen to him if he went even another hour without taking his medication. Whoever had killed his mother, it seemed that they really didn’t want him to get his hands on those pills. “It was Bowers,” he muttered out loud to himself, forgetting Richie’s suggestion of going into the pharmacy. His friend’s gaze intensified, worry creeping into his features again. “It was Bowers,” he repeated, louder this time. “I think he’s the one who killed her. He’s always making fun of me for taking my pills. And then, yesterday, he took them off me and ran off with them. He did it.”

He’d had to stop several times during his rambling, the sudden revelation getting him so riled up he could barely breathe. Richie, who was almost never this quiet, could do nothing but nod in understanding as he rambled on but eventually decided on his own – since his question had not really been answered – that Eddie definitely needed to get some more medication as soon as possible, so he pulled him into the pharmacy.

Only to immediately spot Bowers and his gang just a few yards away, leering at the girl lazily flicking through a magazine at the checkout.

Within a few seconds of catching sight of them, Eddie’s nervousness had flared up into a full-blown panic attack again and Richie wasted no time in getting him out of there, almost just as anxious as he was to get away from Bowers and his henchman before they saw either of them staring from across the shop. “Sorry,” he said breathlessly as they ran out, the two of them slowing to a brisk walk as they headed in the direction of his home.

“It’s not your fault, Richie,” came Eddie’s much needed reply. “You didn’t know they were there.” He fully acknowledged that his friend was only looking out for him, only trying to do what was best for him, unlike his mother who had made those claims almost every day for several years without showing him any real proof of it.

He was glad Richie was with him – even more than he could admit to himself – and wouldn’t have wanted to make the (albeit short) journey to his house on his own. He was always so much calmer when he could feel him next to him, and even more so when they were clinging onto each other, just like they were as they hurried away from the pharmacy out of fear of being caught by Bowers and his gang.

When they finally made it to Richie’s in one piece, Eddie stumbled straight into Richie’s room, taking care to avoid his parents in case conflict arose and they threw him out (which, knowing how unpredictable they could be when they’d been drinking, was perfectly possible) while his friend took a detour to the kitchen – Eddie hadn’t eaten since the lunch time the day before, after all. He could have made it himself, he protested when Richie came into the room with a plate of sandwiches for them to share between themselves. “No – you’re resting,” his friend argued back, taking a seat next to him on the bed. “You’re probably traumatised or something.”

Eddie didn’t know what to say to that, since it was probably true no matter how much he wanted to pretend that it wasn’t, so he started nibbling on a sandwich instead, realising only then just how hungry he was. But all the comments his mother had made about his weight hung in his mind and he started to chew more slowly before eventually stopping altogether. She’d tell him he needed to eat less so he’d refrain from eating anything at all for a few days, growing weaker and weaker with each meal he missed but never letting his friends catch on to anything, but then she’d snap at him to eat more and try to ply him with food until she eventually told him to stop again. The cycle would begin all over again and his friends remained oblivious, only he knowing that he’d never be perfect in his mother’s eyes.

Only this time, it wouldn’t start again. And it never would.

He hadn’t realised the tears gathering in the corners of his eyes until Richie wiped them away with his thumbs, brushing his hair away from his face in the process. He expected an inappropriate joke, something that wasn’t at all funny in the circumstances but that Richie found hilarious. Instead he received nothing but a warm smile and a pair of arms wrapping themselves around him, unable to take the pain away completely but making it a lot more bearable.

“I’m not hungry,” Eddie lied after a moment, keeping his gaze fixed on anything that wasn’t Richie. In reality he was famished, but the echoes of his mother’s voice inside his head made him feel so sick he wouldn’t have been able to eat anything anyway.

The worry and concern refused to disappear from Richie’s eyes but he eventually let go and carried on eating, though he made sure to leave a few sandwiches for Eddie in case he wanted them later on. His priority at that moment was taking Eddie’s mind off of what he’d been through over the last twenty four hours and making sure he felt safe – because as long as he was there, he was safe. 

They spent the next hour playing a board game nobody ended up winning, though Richie claimed that he must have won because he was somewhat further ahead on the board than his friend. Eddie disputed that claim, arguing that anything could have happened during the last stretch of the game but as they stopped playing halfway through, they were both losers. He said it with a grin – the first time he’d done that since two of his friends had found him in the school cupboard earlier that day.

They stopped because Eddie was too tired to really concentrate on the game. He was yawning every two minutes and eventually the older boy told him not to try so hard to stay awake. It was only mid-afternoon but if his body was sending him signals that he needed to rest, then he’d make sure he’d get some rest. “Go on, Eds,” he started as he began packing the game away. “You get to bed.” Eddie froze, kneeling on the carpeted floor, and looked up at the taller boy with confusion in his eyes. “Go on,” Richie repeated. “This your home now, Eds – at least until my parents kick you out,” he joked. Eddie didn’t find it very funny but he gave him a small smile and nodded, heading towards the bed.

Richie’s bed was much more comfortable than his own – bigger too – with a softer mattress, plumper pillows and a thicker duvet (a dramatic change to the thin, ragged blanket he usually had to protect him from the cold). He fell asleep within minutes, finding solace in Richie’s presence and the knowledge that for now, he was safe.

But when he awoke, he felt cold and alone without Richie there next to him, so he jumped out of bed, checked his watch (it was almost seven in the evening, meaning he’d slept for around four and a half hours), and started to quietly search for his friend, keeping quiet so as not to attract any unwanted attention from his parents who, when he’d arrived there earlier, had been noisily talking and presumably drinking in the living room.

He didn’t go into the kitchen though, only opening the door and glancing inside as he walked passed, the visual image of his mother’s corpse laying there in his own kitchen still taunting him from within his own mind, and he thought to himself that he probably wouldn’t have actually been able to make his own sandwiches and was once again grateful for what Richie had done for him, and what he was still doing.

Turning away from the kitchen and closing the door, he headed for the dining room across the hall. There was no sign of Richie or his parents and the mahogany table was clear with the exception of a small, handwritten note. His heart leapt in anticipation, believing it must have been from Richie though he did wonder why he wouldn’t have left it upstairs where he would easily find it, but he hurried over to the table without giving it another thought.

Tozier Boy, if you ever want to see your friend alive again, get to school.

And it became immediately apparent that the note was not intended for him, but for Richie. This must have been how he’d known to come looking for him at the school, but what made very little sense to him was the way in which the note reminded him of his mother – her handwriting, her words. She was always referring to Richie as “that Tozier boy”. But she was dead. And she probably would have been before the note had been written (though he didn’t know why he was assuming that) but it was possible that she had been alive at the time, written the note, left it in Richie’s home and then been murdered, but why – if she knew where her son was being held captive – why wouldn’t she do something about it herself?

The door slammed shut suddenly and he whipped round, dropping the note back onto the table and staring helplessly at the door. “Richie?” he called out, half-annoyed and half-terrified. “Is that you messing about?” He wouldn’t have put it past him. The silence and isolation of being on his own in a house he wasn’t especially used to being eerie enough without adding suspicious and unexplained noises to the list. And with his recent attack and mother’s demise, he was even more on edge now than he normally was.

His watch beeped at him angrily, like it knew he hadn’t taken his pills in over twenty-four hours. He hissed at it to shut up, straining to listen out for any more noises that would explain whether there really was someone else in the house with him. But he didn’t have to, because a hand clawed at his shoulder and a deep, croaky voice that sounded nothing like Richie – unless he’d been getting voice acting lessons to improve his awful impressions – growled into his ear. “No, not Richie, Eddie Bear.”

It sounded exactly like his mother – but demonic. 

He spun around, desperate to get a look at who was behind him, but found an empty space where he’d expected his mother to be. The feeling of a hand gripping his shoulder disappeared and the voice faded into an eerie silence. He must have been going crazy, losing his mind over his mother’s death. But what if she hadn’t died? What if he’d imagined that, too? And his friends?

Suddenly the room was spinning, he was struggling to breathe and scrabbling for his inhaler, desperately hoping he was trapped in some sort of sordid nightmare and that he’d wake up any minute with Richie right beside him. Clinging onto this hope, he bolted for the door – only to trip over something and land awkwardly on the cold hard floor. And when he looked down at what he’d tripped over, he finally saw what he’d been expecting see – his mother’s corpse, battered and bloody and in a worse way than it had seemed the last time he’d set eyes on it, her hollow callous eyes locked soullessly onto him.

He opened his mouth to scream, body frozen in horror, when a gloved hand clasped over his mouth, silencing him before he’d even begun. He swore he heard his watch beep at him again, even though the alarm had only just gone a few minutes ago. The hand let go of him and, biting his lip to keep himself quiet, he turned his head to find a clown standing right behind him. Its yellow eyes were illuminated with malice, its painted grin unnerving and its white make-up cracked. Its clown suit was yellowed, torn and bloodstained, a detail which sent a trembling chill down Eddie’s spine.

Deliberating for a moment which he felt more disconcerting – his dead, broken mother or the undeniably sinister-looking clown – he stood up and turned to face the clown, eventually deciding that a corpse (unless he contracted some terrible disease from it) couldn’t hurt him, but the clown could and, judging by the look on his face, likely would. He held his inhaler to his mouth, breathing heavily into it and wondering where the hell Richie Tozier was and dreading the thought that the clown might have done something to him.

That’s when they both heard the front door slam and footsteps stomp their way into the house. The clown looked unamused but Eddie was a peculiar combination of anxious and relieved, though relief instantly took over when he heard Richie’s voice shouting his name. “In here!” he called back, eyeing the clown’s frustrated face with an ever so slight smirk.  
“I’ll be watching you, Eddie. And waiting,” the clown snarled at him, vanishing without a trace within the next second.

Richie burst in through the door, panic-stricken when he saw the inhaler grasped in Eddie’s hand, like he had to use it recently. “What the hell happened, Eds? My parents didn’t give you any grief, did they?”

Eddie shook his head, still breathing deeply but finding himself calming down now that Richie had reappeared. “Can’t you see it?” he asked, gesturing to where his mother’s corpse had been laying.

“No. See what?” came Richie bemused reply, the apprehension evident in his voice.

Eddie simply shrugged, glancing back to find his mother’s body gone and with nothing in its place. “Nothing.”


	3. Losing Control

It was hours before he’d managed to calm down enough to think rationally and almost midnight by the time he was calm enough to have a proper conversation, and until then his mind was trapped overflowing with shaking questions that made no sense whatsoever, and in between those questions were the occasional thoughts of Richie and how he always seemed to be there to save him, breaking up the hectic mess that the rest of his mind had crumbled into.

There was so much he needed to know. Richie still hadn’t explained his disappearance (probably because Eddie hadn’t wanted to speak at all for over an hour, and he was doing the right thing by leaving him be, though he simultaneously kept an eye on him from a distance and took a protective stance whenever there was a sudden noise or movement) or why he wasn’t confused about that of his parents. Eddie was too busy frantically trying to decide whether his sanity was slipping away or not to voice his confusion, but it remained in the back of his mind the entire time, whispering to him like a ghostly phantom only he could hear.

He had only seen his friend’s parents once since he arrived that afternoon and he’d only seen the back of their heads, their eyes glued to the television set as they laughed loudly and obnoxiously, the living room littered with empty beer cans. He had heard Richie speak to them only once and neither of them had looked in his direction or replied. He hoped to God it wasn’t normal for them to be like this but he had his doubts – and besides, at least his parents were both still alive.

Richie had never once complained about his family life and it took until then for Eddie to find out why; he didn’t exactly have a family life.

He discovered this when Richie left him alone momentarily to clean up the living room floor. Eddie followed him quietly, watching him picking up countless beer cans and broken bottles from a distance until his friend caught sight of him and he stepped out from amongst the shadows, letting his presence be known. He wanted to say something, to ask if it was always like that and if having to clean up their mess was the worst it ever got. But instead he said nothing and started helping him without a word, reaching for a couple of bottles and loading them into the rubbish bag Richie had taken out from under the kitchen sink.

The third bottle was a mistake. He snatched it up too eagerly and its jagged glass neck sliced through the skin of his hand, resulting in him dropping it immediately (though Richie, with his almost feline reflexes, managed to catch it in the rubbish bag before it hit the floor). Richie made him stop then and directed him towards the bathroom, where he said there would a first aid kit in the cupboard above the sink. He caught up with him in the bathroom quickly, finding Eddie cleaning his wound and with a plaster in his hand, ready to use it.

“Sorry about that, Eds.” Lowering himself slightly, he took the plaster from the younger boy’s hand and, once Eddie had finished cleaning his cut, gently stuck the plaster to his skin, making sure that the wound was covered perfectly. “They can be really messy.” He gave a small smile but the younger didn’t smile back.

Eddie was too focused on small yet noticeable mark on the side of Richie’s face – the one that only been revealed when he moved his head a little too quickly, his wavy hair shifting out of the way for just a moment – to realise he should have been smiling back. How could he smile, knowing his best friend was hurt and hadn’t told anyone?

Noticing him staring, Richie instinctively covered the side of his face with his hand and glanced at the floor uncomfortably. “It’s nothing,” he mumbled, not even looking his friend in the eye. Eddie replied that it didn’t look like nothing.

“Does it… Does it happen a lot?” he asked tentatively, his gaze, too, dropping to the floor – though his mind remained fixed firmly on the scar on Richie’s face. His mother had been controlling, yes, to a point where it was becoming intolerable, but she had never gone so far as to hurt him physically; she never would have done that – no-one who loves their son ever would.

Richie started to nod but immediately changed his mind. “It was a one-off, Eds, so don’t worry. And it was an accident. He was aiming for the trash but the bottle hit me instead. I got in the way – that’s all,” he shrugged, feigning nonchalance but Eddie suspected there was a lot more to it than a simple one-off accident. He’d never seen his friend so… hollow. It was exactly the opposite of how Richie Tozier was supposed to act.

He was about to say something else but Richie cut him off before he could even open his mouth, asking if he was ready to talk about what he’d seen. Swallowing the growing lump in his throat, Eddie nodded slowly and tried to put his mental images into words. “I guess I’m just… I don’t know – scared, about my mom. I saw her, Rich, in the kitchen. I swear I did. And then there was this… clown.” He paused, breathing deeply into his inhaler, before adding, “It was going to kill me.”

He felt a hand on his back and tensed up immediately… until he realised it was Richie rubbing circles into his back like he so often did when he was panicking. “Now you have to tell me where you were,” he insisted in between deep, trembling breaths, though his pulse rate was beginning to slow.

“Fine,” Richie breathed – a sigh of relief at the acknowledgement that his friend was calming down. “I went back to the pharmacy – Bowers and his gang were gone by the time I got there – to see if I could get you another bottle of pills, but they said you had to go yourself. I didn’t want to disturb you – that’s why I went on my own.”

“Why didn’t you leave a note?” Eddie asked with a smile, though he was still a little annoyed that Richie hadn’t been smart enough to let him know where he was going.

“I did,” Richie grinned, the look of dismay and confusion on the younger boy’s face becoming the highlight of his day. “I left on the nightstand – you know, where I thought you’d find it easily, idiot.”

And when they returned to Richie’s room a minute later, there was indeed a note waiting for him on the nightstand – one which, in his haste to locate his friend, Eddie had missed completely.

As they crossed the landing from the bathroom to the bedroom, the clicking – almost crunching – sound of a key turning in a lock alerted them to the return of Richie’s drunken parents (not that they necessarily deserved such a title) and they hurried out of the way, slamming the door behind them to avoid being seen. Eddie was expecting to be kicked out the moment they noticed he was there, but given how neglected his friend appeared to be, he was beginning to wonder if they’d ever notice him at all.

Eddie was no longer tired since he had slept for quite a while that afternoon, but Richie was beginning to yawn frequently and it was getting late, so he suggested they went to bed anyway. Besides, he knew he’d sleep well if Richie was around. He hadn’t expected to still be sleeping in his friend’s bed as he had done earlier that day, when Richie too needed somewhere to sleep, but Richie refused to let him sleep on the floor after the trauma he’d been through – what with being locked in school overnight and then finding his mother’s corpse, and not forgetting the clown that only he seemed to be able to see – and Eddie refused to allow his friend to sleep on the floor – it was his bed, after all – so they ended up sleeping side by side. 

The bed was more than big enough for the both of them and yet Richie still insisted on sleeping so close to him that their bodies were pressed together, his chest against Eddie’s back, his arms wrapped around him in a protective embrace. Eddie didn’t mind at all.

Until he woke up in the middle of the night, their position having remained the same but Richie was whimpering – a sound which he had never heard his friend make before. He sounded so helpless and distressed, his nails digging into the younger boy’s stomach as he tightened his grip on him, arms quivering but maintaining their crushing strength. Escaping from the protective cage Richie had built around him, Eddie rolled over and immediately pulled him into a hug, expecting to be able to calm him down relatively quickly.

Yet instead of soothing his friend, he somehow managed to become tense himself, his senses instantly becoming attacked by something sweet, metallic and exquisitely dangerous. It was the scent of something he hated, but which he was beginning to find irresistible. All his favourite things and everything he hated most combined into one intoxicating concoction. And he was pretty sure it was Richie.

Closing his eyes, he breathed in the scent and instinctively bared his teeth, an action which he could not consciously provide an explanation for. His grip tightened and he found himself no longer interested in calming his friend down, but suddenly a lot more intrigued by the notion of biting him. His pulse rate quickened, becoming more sporadic than he had ever thought possible and his hands became clammy. He glanced at his inhaler on the nightstand before deciding it was no use to him. What he was feeling wasn’t panic, but excitement.

He buried his face in the cruck of Richie’s neck, which usually would have been an expression of mutual affection between the two of them but, on this occasion, was driven by pure hunger. He wasn’t even thinking about Richie anymore – just the sweet, exhilarating scent. Until he caught sight of a tear rolling down his friend’s cheek. That’s when he stopped and shook him awake, throwing himself to the other side of the room the moment Richie regained consciousness.


	4. Go with It

Eyes straining, his heart racing and with every muscle in his body quivering, Richie held his breath, wishing he could tear his eyes out of their sockets if it meant he wouldn’t have to watch any longer. And yet, like it was a car crash, his eyes were glued to the sickening sight in front of him. He was completely unable to look away and it was not for lack of trying. In the shadows, he sat trembling in an uncomfortable wooden chair, his arms locked in place by a contraption he could only guess was the clown’s creation, while skeletal fingers clawed at the sides of his face, their cool metal holding his eyes wide open and forcing him to stare straight ahead at his friend’s destruction.

The hall was dimly lit for the most part, Richie being positioned in the centre of almost complete darkness, but a spotlight hung dramatically from the bare ceiling, illuminating the middle of the room where Eddie lay in chains on the hard, unfeeling floor, a sinister man dressed as a clown looming over him (but ensuring to keep out of Richie’s way, giving him a perfect line of sight). Grating his teeth, he gripped the arms of the chair as a large bead of sweat bubbled at the top of his forehead, dripping down his face as more beads began to form.

Perhaps the worst part was not everything he was forced to watch, but everything he could hear, and with his hands confined to the armrests he was unable to cover his ears with his hands, his mind too broken and bruised to block out any of the sounds. So many screams. So many cries. And Eddie could see him watching, listening, there but not able to do anything to protect him. So many times, he’d shrieked his name, screaming at Richie to help though both of them knew that he couldn’t.

His last cry was cut off partway through, his hair becoming tangled with blood as the salty crimson substance dribbled across his neck – where blood was bubbling through a vast, nasty gash. The clown turned his head, leering at Richie with his yellow eyes and ferocious smile.

By the time Eddie’s body stopped trembling, Richie’s vision had started fading and his body began getting lighter, as if he was floating. Then every one of his senses failed him.

 

Richie woke up in a cold sweat. Eddie watched him quietly from distance, crouched on the floor in the corner of the room. He was just glad his friend was awake and that the disturbingly tantalising scent was disappearing, the look on Richie’s face turning from horror to relief amazingly quickly, and then on to confusion as he noticed how far away from him Eddie had gotten. But as the scent had disappeared Eddie apologised and made his way back to the bed, crawling in between the sheets again and making sure the older boy was alright (though he kept a safe distance from him, noticing how Richie’s face fell when he failed to come any closer).

“It was just a nightmare,” Richie commented, sitting upright and leaning back slightly against the headboard, though Eddie mentally remarked that it couldn’t have been very comfortable for his back. “Are you okay?” he asked, turning to the younger boy with worry written all over his face.

Eddie nodded silently in response, lying back down with his head against the pillow and curling up into a ball, relaxed enough to close his eyes and drift back off to sleep now that he knew Richie was okay – although he was still haunted by his own behaviour, how eager he’d been to hurt his own best friend just because of a scent he couldn’t even explain the cause of. Just as he slipped into a nightmare-ridden sleep, he felt Richie’s hand reach across the bed and graze against his own, their fingers becoming tenderly intertwined. He smiled to himself as his heartbeat slowed, lulling him into a deep sleep.

 

Instead of allowing himself to fall into an unhealthy routine of sleep and depression, he went along with Richie’s idea of getting him out the house, the two of them meeting up with Stan and Bill at the entrance to the sewer like they’d planned to do the day before. Eddie wasn’t exactly pleased about the meeting place but he would have done anything not to be alone, and the fact that Richie was there was simply a bonus. And he did, after all, understand the reason they were going there. To look for Georgie.

It had been almost a year since his disappearance and most people had given up looking for him, believing him to be dead and focusing on the more recent cases of missing persons, but not Bill. It wold have come to him as a shock if he’d ever given up the search for his younger brother. And do, even though he found the idea of going anywhere near the sewer utterly repulsive, he went along for moral support and tried his best to keep his mouth shut about how disgusting it was.

Neither he nor Stan were willing to enter the sewer, so he stood back and watched, most of the time with his hand over his mouth as he tried not to vomit. Turning his attention away from the repellent concoction of odours seeping out from the sewer’s entrance, Stan frequently checked to make sure he was okay, after having heard from Bill what had happened the day before. Each time Eddie replied that he was fine, but it never seemed very convincing.

Their short, heavily one-sided conversation was interrupted by a shout from inside the sewer. As the two of them peered inside, they saw a beam of light radiating from Bill’s torch, a dirtied once-white shoe in his other hand. Though they all at one moment or another feared that it belonged to Georgie, Richie confirmed it in fact did not, and that it belonged to a more recent missing child – Betty Ripson – instead. Swallowing the nervousness at the back of his throat, Eddie breathed a sigh of relief – with the aid of his inhaler – when Stan spoke up, voicing exactly what Eddie had been thinking. “This is disgusting. I’m getting out of here.” He turned to leave and Eddie automatically followed, their other two friends following suit, the filthy water splashing in the tunnel when Bill let go of the shoe, dropping it to the ground.

As they collapsed onto the grass, with Richie leaning his head against the tree behind him and protectively slinging an arm around Eddie’s waist, they learned that it was not just the two of them who had been experiencing hellish visions and nightmares that left them cold, fearful and trembling.

Stan, too, had seen something horrifying.

A petrifying, almost faceless woman, he said, had crawled out of the painting in his father’s office, lunging at him and knocking him off balance. He hadn’t been hurt, but naturally had feared for his life. He admitted he had seen it but refused to believe that it had been real, his fear, he’d decided, had not been stimulated by the idea that it was real but by the simple horror of the image. And yet as he spoke, as he claimed that he was no longer afraid and that it must have been an illusion, his fingers were tearing up the grass below him without his knowledge, gripping the blades and ripping them into shreds.

It was then that the screaming began. Eddie was the first to look up, eyes scanning the busy surroundings for anything that could have been making the noise. His gaze soon landed on the entrance to the sewer and while something in his brain clicked into place, his stomach wound up performing somersaults. He couldn’t go in there, even if someone needed help. He considered this for a moment, eventually deciding that if one of the losers needed him, especially if it was Richie, then he’d have no choice but to brave the sickening smell and hunt through the tunnels in search of them.

By that time, another familiar scent had kicked in and his teeth instantly bared themselves, automatically priming for attack. Before he knew it, he had already begun tracking the sound, following it into the sewer’s entrance without a moment’s thought for the germs he was so desperately afraid of. His friends were never far behind but as they reached the entrance once again they heard similar cries coming from another direction. Strangely eager to be alone, his instincts taking over in search of the familiar scent, Eddie insisted that – much to Richie’s dismay – the others all went off to help whoever else was shrieking, saying that he was sure he could handle one of them on his own. And then he was off, stalking through the tunnels as the alluring scent guided him towards its origin.

A red balloon, on which the words “I love Derry” were printed in white, burst in his face before he could see anyone else. But as he stared past the remains of exploded rubber, he found exactly what he’d been searching for. A horrified, shrieking, sobbing Patrick Hockstetter, lying in the murky water with his hands held up protectively in front of his face. Had Eddie’s mind been in control, he would have run out to confer with the others. For that matter, if his mind had been in control, he never would have gone in there alone in the first place, and possibly not at all.

But it wasn’t. His mind had slipped a while ago, the moment the sweet scent of whatever this was had broken through to his senses, instantly throwing logic and reason out the window. All he could think of now was that bloody, bittersweet aroma that felt like love and war all at once.

Hands curled into claw-like embellishments, he pounced onto the older, usually much scarier boy, teeth aiming for his throat. He knocked his hands out the way on impact, with so much ease he thought it laughable. Patrick squirmed, making quiet helpless whimpers that only made destroying him more enjoyable. Usually it was Eddie was weak, helpless and weeping. Not this time. This time he was going to win. This time he was going to tear him apart.

Until something stopped him. Not morality – not this time – but a hand, gripping the back of his t-shirt and pulling him backwards, a low growl from behind him telling him to stop. “I am proud of you though, Eds.” He whipped his head round and glared at the clown – the same one he’d seen before, the one he was half-sure wasn’t real – for daring to use the nickname that meant so much to him because only Richie ever used it, even though he hated it. “But I think I’ll take over now. Stand back,” the clown ordered, waving a hand at him and ignoring the cold look completely.

Eddie did as he was told anyway, the trance he’d been trapped under having been temporarily lifted, and stood back and watched as one of his most hated enemies was viciously murdered right before his eyes, his inhaler having to do most of the breathing for him as blood and gore splattered across the tunnel walls.

Panicking, he turned and ran on trembling legs through the tunnels, frantically trying to remember the way back to his friends. But somehow the clown still ended up in front of him, a toothy grin on its painted face. “Going somewhere, Eddie?” Eddie couldn’t speak but nodded hesitantly, looking past the clown as if it wasn’t there. “Come back and see me soon, won’t you?” He didn’t nod this time but accepted a card from the clown – he had no real choice in the matter, however – and stared at the messy handwriting. It was an address.

And when he looked back up the clown was gone, his three friends staring back at him from the entrance. His pulse rate began to slow, the sight of them calming him down, but something felt wrong. Richie wasn’t looking at him the way he used to.


End file.
